Innovation Summer 2012: Wounded Warriors + Design

Finding Inspired Answers

Anyone who has walked into my office in the last 20 years has been greeted by the same sight. Those who are unfamiliar with design usually ask, “What’s that?” It appears to be some kind of fabulous wooden sculpture. Those steeped in design history immediately recognize it as a classic piece by Charles and Ray Eames, the same piece I recently saw hanging, for example, in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. It is a wooden splint for repairing a damaged leg but not just any wooden splint. This one changed the face of modern design, the future of furniture and the career of the 20th century’s most respected design team.

The iconic Eames Leg Splint was designed in 1942 for use by the US Navy in World War II. The US Navy called upon Charles and Ray Eames to create a lightweight, inexpensive leg splint. The metal splints of that period weren’t secure enough to hold the leg still, causing unnecessary death from gangrene, shock, blood loss and so on. The military needed a lightweight splint for wounded soldiers that could get them out of the field more securely. The resulting design is a highly sculptural yet functional device that can be mass produced, is modular and nests so that it can be conveniently and inexpensively transported. The molded splint is formed with contours that fit to and immobilize a leg at the same time providing perfectly placed openings for fabric restraints.

Although the splint was eventually manufactured by Evans Products’ Molded Plywood Division (over 150,000 were made), it was access to military technology and manufacturing facilities that allowed the Eames’ to perfect their bent plywood technique, which they had been working on for several years. In its three-dimensional, biomorphic form, the leg splint paved the way for the Eames’ subsequent iconic and highly influential plywood furniture designs, includwww.INNOVATIONjournal.org

ing the LCD chair and the Eames lounger, among many others.

The Leg Splint is a truly beautiful object and an inspired answer to a problem that had none. This was really where the Eames legend began. This example of a seemingly specialized design problem—a practical aid for disabled soldiers— inspired a whole aesthetic in modernist furnishings, the chairs that launched a thousand imitators and a new ethos of simple, organic lines in household objects. The story of the Leg Splint suggests that disability concerns may be an overlooked area of aesthetic inspiration, able to point to creative breakthroughs that have wide relevance and impact.

I found it at an old antique shop in Milwaukee’s Third Coast warehouse district, when you could find deals before the area was redeveloped to its gentrified state. Actually, to be accurate, I found about seven or eight of them, all in the original paper wrappers. So I bought them all for around $20 each. I unwrapped one to put out, as it were, and it has served as an inspiration ever since. Little did I know that one day we would dedicate an issue of Innovation to the very kind of exploration in the marriage of technology, material and design seen in the Eames splint—an effort to change the world for the better by increasing the quality of living for a few. We are hoping this issue of Innovation serves the same mission.

—Mark Dziersk, FIDSA, Innovation Executive Editor mark@lunar.com